Cove Read online

  He reaches up and scrapes the salt from his closed lid, picks at the hard crystal. He wets his hand in the water, blinks with the sting as he bathes his eye.

  When he refocuses, the butterfly is gone. For a split second he believes again it was his eye, then he spots it, heading out over the water. As if something leaves him.

  He felt a confusion, a kind of throb in his head. There was a complete horizon. A horizon everywhere around and no point of it seemed closer than another. It brought claustrophobia. He did not know if he was moving—if he was traveling. He could not tell in which direction if he was.

  He felt only the rock, the sway, the dip and wallow of the boat.

  ___________

  The thump of the fin stirs him.

  His head rested on the gunwale of the boat and the dark fin struck the boat inches from him.

  He does not move. Cannot move. A few yards off the fin rises again, a half-meter sail out of the water, a gun-gray body.

  It makes for the boat. He is frozen, still cannot move. His primal systems fire a wave of fear through him. He feels the adrenaline trying to get through him like water poured on ice, and the fin folds, disappears.

  He is frozen, urinates, cannot move his head.

  When it bumps the boat again it is as if the fin has grown tactile. It folds and flops, reaches over the gunwale of the boat; it is hallucinatory, cartoonish, like a sea lion’s flipper; and then the body of the fish, clown-like, lolls side-on in the water, a disk the size of a table. They are eye to eye.

  This cannot be happening, he thinks. The sunfish regards him, its curious fin folding, flopping. A strange ripple to the water in the otherwise lambent calm. This is it, he thinks. This is it.

  The sunfish stayed with him for hours. It could be said it steered him. It was almost the size of the kayak in length and bumped and rubbed the boat with a droll instinct, as a cow might a post.

  The sunfish is not fishable, not edible, and no instinct has been driven into it to stay away from man. And perhaps it was the warmth of the boat it liked, with the plastic heated in the sun. Or perhaps it was something more.

  But it stayed and bumped the boat for hours and by doing so steered it; and it cannot be known whether it was deliberate, benevolent, that it did not steer the kayak farther out to sea.

  He woke to the sound, far off, of a speedboat engine. There was land in sight, like a presence that had woken him. For a moment he thought the warm sun on his neck was someone’s breath.

  His good arm had gone into the water, and it was only when he lifted it he felt the sting where the little finger had been stripped.

  It was torn and frayed to the first knuckle, skinned through to the flesh and swollen and ragged with water. The pain was searing and hot. The nail was still there but had tooth marks where the little fish had bitten at it. When he touched the finger, his head spun.

  In the center of the kayak, before him, was a locker, and he had some sureness there was a first-aid kit there. Given what he did not know, he felt confused at the sureness. He tried the screw of the locker but it would not give. Saw, on his skin, a gray dust above the point his arm had lain in the water, felt the knowledge of it flutter, float inside him. A sense of himself, a fly trapped on the wrong side of glass.

  When he tried the locker again, the pain of his finger shot around his body. He gave up. Somehow he knew it was always stubborn. Just accept the pain. Focus on the fact the land is there.

  He knew now he had gone out for something, and he knew this was his boat. But it was only now he truly recognized the paddle was gone and understood it. He was less spacey, and more functional. With that came a low panic.

  The idea of breath on his neck lay under everything. A suspicion someone had been left behind.

  He turned in his seat and reached for the drybag, husbanding the finger. Used his teeth and hand to open it, spilled out the looser things, took the sunblock, the T-shirt, the old cloth.

  When he saw the address label on the bag he saw his name. It was like looking into an empty cup. Then he heard a voice say it. The knowledge it gave down was as delicate as an image sitting on the surface of the water, disrupting as he moved to reach it.

  He let it go, instinctively.

  It does not matter who you are. You know what you are physically, and that you’re in a kayak somewhere on the ocean. It only matters what you are, right now.

  His face hurt to touch. His skin was parched and sore and was stretched and gritty with salt.

  He rubbed the sunblock in. A baffling thought of vacations. Worked urgently, as if the next few moments were vital.

  His ears were blistered and cracked, he rubbed the lotion into his hair. He did his dead hand and was frightened by it. That he could not feel it. That the arm lay so inert. It had stretched out now, dormant. He had a sort of horror at his body. How long has this taken to happen? How long have I been out here?

  He looked again at his useless hand, the now purplish fernlike pattern. It seemed to follow his veins, mark tiny capillaries, a leaf skeleton disappearing under the tide line of ash into the sleeve of his top.

  He felt the arm for breaks. Any misangle, like a cracked stick. Nothing. Believed then, horribly, that it was blood poisoning.

  A wave of sick went through him.

  He knew he had gone out on the kayak. Remembered loading it onto the car, gulls along the shallow river, luminous somehow in the early-morning light, then drifting out at sea. The time in between was gone. Like a cigarette burn in a map.

  With what he had to hand, he had to choose what part of him got burned.

  He took the T-shirt and wet it, wrapped it on his head, the touch of it a heat at first against his burned skin. But then it cooled, there was a sort of weight lifted, as if the sun stopped pressing.

  Tucking them into his shorts, he laid the spare shopping bags as best he could over his knees, looked at the land, just an inch or so high on the far-off horizon. He had a total conviction that things would be okay. Heard a voice he trusted tell him; wondered if it was just his own voice, that he could not recognize.

  He unzipped the pocket of his buoyancy aid and fumbled out the phone, dropped it into his lap as he popped open the waterproof pouch. He turned it upside down and tipped the phone out, thunk on the boat, picked it up and tried to start it. Nothing.

  Take it apart. Let it dry out.

  He struggled with it until the back slipped off. There against the battery lay the wren feather.

  He trapped it with his thumb. Held it carefully. His memory like a dropped pack of cards.

  Next door’s cat. Its strange possessive mewling, crouched over the wren, the bird like a knot of wood.

  The bird vibrated briefly when he picked it up, a shudder of life. Then flew away.

  He could not picture her, but the sense of her came back.

  They had kept a feather each.

  The idea of her, whoever she might be, seemed to grow into a point on the horizon he could aim for. He believed he would know more as he neared her.

  He put the feather and the pieces of the phone together into the drybag, then fitted the phone pouch over his fingers, leaving his forefinger and thumb free. He felt sick as the little finger touched the plastic but he was determined, and the pain, in a way, was a little coach to him. He braced himself because he knew it would be worse when he began. Then he leaned to the water and paddled.

  The pain was like a trigger.

  When he passed out, it was like another white light shot through him.

  The storm had begun miles out. A patch of air eventually succumbed to tiny variances until it became unstable. Under different pressures, cloud built up and traveled, pushing cool air on in front.

  As it went, the cloud itself began to polarize. The positive and negative forces in it segregated. Negativity built up in the base sending step leaders out—negative energy, reaching down in lines—until the ground responded with positive streamers, feelers waiting patiently.

 
; When the two met, current flowed between them, trying to neutralize the separation that had occurred in the cloud. To short-circuit it.

  The lightning is not the strike. It is the local effect of the strike. The air around it explodes.

  Shouts. Faintly. Loud shouts that reach him quieter than whispers. That seem to carry on the air like faintly visible things. The ringing in his head is a hum now, a low choir, the flick of water on the boat constant, random, like the sound of work in the distance.

  He senses movement, just a shifting air, the smallest breeze that bears the shouts; a sure current, the kayak drifts. Goes sideways past the shingle bay.

  He is in a dream. He sees, there, a penguin crowd of people bathing in their clothes. In black-and-white suits. They are playing in the water. Children in waistcoats. As if a wedding has run into the sea.

  Where am I?

  He lifts his arm. They are far off. Tiny on the shore. Tries to shout. Shouts like a puncture. Like a hiss of air.

  Hears the draw and swash of the water breaking in the bay, sees the children jump the waves. The sound of play. A bus parked on the road behind the beach.

  Are they celebrating the end of the world? he thinks.

  I am dreaming. They are bathing in their clothes.

  The boy had been given the binoculars for his birthday which was at the start of the vacation and they had hardly left his neck since then. As well as looking through them, he loved the rubbery smell of them.

  He was so attached to the binoculars that he did not even go into the water.

  As a baby he had liked to stretch his hands out at an object until it was brought to him, and it was a sort of magic to him, how the binoculars seemed to do just that. To bring things up.

  The other children were bored of trying to splash him and his parents had given up trying to persuade him to put the binoculars away for a while and go play; and he stood on the beach near the water with his eyes stuck to the lenses, as if there were something wrong with him.

  He was the only one who noticed the distant kayak, a small splinter out to sea, a pale speck on which sat a lone man, his head bound, it seemed to the boy, like some strange Arab.

  He watches the land fade, as if it slowly sinks into the ocean.

  There is the humming in his ears and the constant sound of breeze now, like a wind through trees. An illusion that the breaking tide is close.

  The sun, and there is nothing he can do about it, is on the way down. He feels the temperature dropping, a respite of its physical pressure. It is still hot, beating, but with the slight relief there is a slow, sickening certainty.

  He has bailed out the cockpit best he can. The cloud of dark piss, the salt rimes, the tide mark of salt that shows how the water has evaporated.

  Scales of mackerel decal the inside, here and there a zip of dried blood. The texture of the plastic, bumped, like a dashboard, for some reason makes him think of being in a car. He wets his face with the damp cloth, now and then.

  If you can see people fully dressed, you might see anything. How will you know, if she comes back to mind, that she is real? That you have not just conjured her?

  He undoes the phone again, fishes out the wren feather and holds it.

  He feared the state of him was frightening. That if he just stayed still, his memory would approach.

  You’ll know. You’ll surely know.

  For a while, as he drifts, it is not the thirst, nor the sun, nor the open space around him that occupies him most. It is the need to stand up.

  Still, his memory is out of reach, things approaching, dipping, disappearing. A butterfly, nearly knowledge. He thinks of the state of his skin, does not know if he had started out clean shaven, knows, though, that his stubble grows at uneven rates.

  He tries the locker again. Pressures and turns with his thumb and finger, patiently until the screw hatch jumps and, after a few hard-fought-for millimeters, rattles loose.

  He fishes out the built-in pouch, squeezes the toggle and loosens the drawstring. Feels, for a horrible moment, that he has opened some plug.

  He unrolls the first-aid bag, the rip of Velcro a strange abrupt noise that seems to tear the fabric of sounds he has got used to. With the violence of the act, some of the dried ash falls flaked from his skin, as if drawing attention to itself.

  He opens his dry mouth best he can—winces at the chapped cracks of his lips—and bites down on a roll of gauze, uses an antiseptic towel on his finger. He even smells the sting, as he did as a child, antiseptic on a grazed knee. He rocks it away, humming through the gauze, rocks until he can open his eyes on the pain.

  He tears the dressing packet, puts the pad down on his thigh, and puts it clumsily around his finger. Then he starts the papery tape with his teeth and gets an end around the dressing, jamming the tape roll in his knees, makes a clumsy bandage. Fits on a plastic finger guard. The effort makes him reel.

  The water slapping the side of the boat picks up intentfully. It’s just the angles, he tells himself. It’s because I’m changing the weight.

  He leans over the front stow, unclips it, and draws out the large drybag, sees the small pan in the hold, the rolled cloth that holds cutlery, a wooden spoon.

  He feels odd little humpback lurches to the water, an empty sickness without food. Has a bizarre sense that he could reach out and put his hand on her stomach.

  He drags out a shopping bag. It is heavy with a bottle of water and a bottle of dark beer. He stares at the beer for a moment. He was going somewhere. He was going to drink a beer. Her stomach. Then, fumbling, urgent, he takes a drink of water, warm, hot almost, wets his mouth, lips, lets it pour wastefully over his chin. There is a shock to the immediacy of its effect, a voice screaming: do not waste this; do not drink too much. He brings the bottle down, a sort of fear to him. Dab at it, he told himself. Don’t drink too fast. Thinks of watering a dry plant too quickly.

  You have to save this, he thinks. Dry dirt will repel the thing it needs the most. Stares again for a moment at the beer.

  Empties out the dry bag:

  Small gas stove. Espresso cup. Coffee maker. Small plastic box of coffee. Tackle box with traces, hooks, weights, swivels, lures. Thick sweater. Reel of fishing line. Windbreaker.

  You went out. You went out too far fishing.

  He keeps out the thick sweater. Tucks the windbreaker in by the seat. Does a brief inventory of the boat.

  One liter water, less that gone. A bottle of dark beer. Two drybags, large and small. Tackle box. Small gas stove. T-shirt. Fishing line. Espresso cup. Knife and fork. Sunblock. Coffee maker. Car keys. Wooden spoon. Frying pan. Small plastic box of coffee. Thick sweater. Old cloth. Small towel. Drink bottle. Wind-breaker. First-aid kit containing: dressings; Band-Aids; emergency blanket; surgical tape; antiseptic wipes; needle and thread; roll of gauze; finger guards; painkillers.

  He does not add: one man. One out of two arms. Four out of ten fingers. No paddle. No flashlight. One dead phone.

  The sun drops beautifully.

  He takes off the buoyancy aid and pulls on the thick sweater, useless arm first. The smell of the sweater triggers something, but it is like a piano key hitting strings that are gone.

  He puts the windbreaker on, again the useless arm first, but cannot zip it up. Then he puts back on the buoyancy aid and, in the doing of it, loses the T-shirt from his head. Watches, stoical, as it floats out on the water like a strange fish. There is a slight swell to the sea now, and the pan and bottle in the forward hold roll and scrape inside, roll and scrape with the loll of the boat.

  He scoots forward again, opens the hold cover, horribly aware in that instant how small the kayak is, stuffs the pan and bottle under the drybag to jam them.

  Of all the things to put up with, that would be too much. The persistent clunking. It was one of the few things he had any say in.

  He has a horrible fear of falling out of the boat. Its frail platform. Of being afloat in the coming darkness. Suddenly can’t help the sense th
at there are cities under the sea.

  He rearranges the bungee at the back bay, nearly vomits as he upsets the balance enough to think he’s going in, and slips it over himself like a seat belt. He fastens one end of the paddle leash to the carry handle, the other around his ankle. It is nothing. But it is all that he can do.

  You took it off. The paddle leash. It kept catching the cleat as you paddled out. There were gannets folding into the water around you.

  Into the smaller drybag he puts the things he thinks he needs the most.

  Bottle of water. Now empty drink bottle. Sunblock. Knife. Fishing reel. The mackerel wrapped up in a bag. Emergency blanket. Dead phone. Keys. For some reason he cannot discard the phone, the keys.

  Then he clips the drybag around one of the straps on his buoyancy aid.

  With dark the cold hits. It is immediate, comes with a sureness that it will get colder.

  For a long time he fights the need to piss. Or what feels like a long time.

  He lifts off the bungee, kneels in the boat, and pisses off the side, a weak stream, a stench he hears pattering on the side of the gunwale, feels it mist his bare legs. But where it hits the water there is a sudden light, a gorgeous phosphorescence.

  When he’s done, careful of his hurt finger, he puts his hand partially in the water, waves it, disturbs, sees its shape green and fluid like a separate creature. He feels a sense of wonder. A wondrous sense of what has happened to him. The impossibility of it all. Begins to feel hungry.

  When he sits back he redoes the bungee around himself. For a long while holds the image of his hand.

  He looks at the stars, sees those on the horizon. That some of them might be the lights of ships, of land, he can’t allow himself to think. Cannot allow himself to imagine the warmth, the food, the safety they would mean. It is better they are stars. That they are out there somewhere in the same infinity as him. That they are not real beacons.

  The swell has picked up. The boat dips, sways as if two unseen hands shift it, as if panning for rare minerals. With his empty stomach, he feels a constant bowl of nausea.